


An Educational Expedition

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel (TV)
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-15
Updated: 2019-11-15
Packaged: 2021-01-31 08:04:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21442921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Blair goes on an expedition organized by Rainier... and finds The Sentinels of Paraguay
Kudos: 17





	An Educational Expedition

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Thursday prompt 'moon'

An Educational Expedition

by Bluewolf

Blair went to Rainier when he was sixteen.

Two full years younger than any of his fellows, he didn't have much of a social life. The other students were friendly enough, but didn't want anyone along in the evenings who was not only two years younger but looked more like four or five years younger. It didn't particularly bother him. He was happy to spend his evenings studying, his Saturdays wandering the aisles of secondhand bookstores looking for books that might give him more insight into his chosen subject of anthropology. He didn't find many, but that didn't matter; he couldn't afford to buy more than one or two, although he no longer had to limit his possessions to what would fit into two duffel bags.

The Anthropology Department organized an expedition every summer to let the students see how people living a less technological life than they did lived; but for Blair's first two years at Rainier, Dr. Stoddard, who organized those trips, reluctantly had to tell Blair that he was too young to be included. Several years earlier, after one student who was showing off broke a leg, Rainier insisted that the party had to be insured and the insurance company wouldn't cover anyone under eighteen. Stoddard told Blair, in confidence, that he was sure that Blair was in many ways more mature, and less likely to do something stupid, than several of the older students, as well as being more likely to gain something of value from the trips. But he had to abide by the restrictions imposed by the insurance company.

When Blair was eighteen Stoddard welcomed him into his first expedition. It was to South America. The party had a three-hour layover in Simon Bolivar Airport before boarding a plane to Cacique Amare Airport, from where they would travel by road into the jungle, and to a small village Stoddard had first visited several years previously. Although the people were living a subsistence farming life rather than a hunter-gatherer one, it was still very primitive according the way of life of the students, who were mostly from urban backgrounds.

Blair wished it had been possible to travel the handful of miles to Caracas, but the travel to and from there would take up too much of the three hours. Instead, after a quiet word with Stoddard, he headed for the airport bookshop, while the other students settled down to talk and - in some cases - sleep.

He picked up a travel book that gave quite a surprising amount of information about rural Venezuela - it seemed that not all visitors wanted to spend all their time in the bigger cities. His Spanish was good enough that he knew he could easily use it to augment what they saw. And then he found a small section of secondhand books - and one of them was a very old book written in English! The Sentinels of Paraguay... He looked at the price, did a quick mental conversion to dollars - and added it to the travel book. He was almost ashamed at how little the two books - especially the historical one - cost him. He returned to Stoddard, pushed the old book into his pack and began to glance through the travel one, concentrating on the section dealing with Orinoco farming communities.

***

As they boarded their plane back to Cascade, Blair decided that he had probably gained more from the trip than most of the others. The farming village they had visited had been so similar in many respects to one in Africa he and his mother had lived in for a month when he was ten. When he wrote the inevitable report on the trip that they would be expected to do, he would be able to compare it to that stay in the African village eight years previously.

He had chosen not to start reading his other purchase until he got back to Cascade, but when he did - he found it fascinating. Sentinels - tribal guardians, watchmen whose position in the tribe was to watch for danger to the tribe, help the hunters find game, work with the tribal shaman - who in turn kept the tribe's watchman grounded. Men with five senses heightened, who could see and hear far better than anyone else, know by scent or taste if something was edible or not, know by just touching someone if that person had the beginning of a fever (and therefore an illness or infection that could be life threatening, but for which the shaman probably had a potential cure).

He began to search for people with heightened senses, and did in fact find dozens - hundreds - but mostly with heightened smell and taste, who worked as cooks, or with firms that blended tea, coffee, liquors or perfume. He suspected that some top sportsmen or athletes had a heightened sense of sight... or perhaps balance? a sense that wasn't mentioned in the book, but everyone knew about people who had an amazing sense of balance. But the really important ones, he decided, were sight and hearing. The book's writer indicated that those were the most valued senses.

Could he find one of those sentinels in a modern, technological world? Unlikely, he thought. Life would be quite difficult for them. In sheer self-defence, so that they weren't overwhelmed by sensory input, they would probably suppress their ability.

He would carry on looking for someone with more than smell and taste heightened, but finding one was, he suspected, akin to asking for the moon.


End file.
